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Celo Communications, whose headquarters is in Dublin, has launched eSigner, which claims to deliver strong encryption and digital signatures to Internet browsers. The technology can sign text documents, but it can also attach legally binding digital signatures to Web pages in html, including graphics and formatting.
"Up till now, digital signatures have mainly been applied for short and simple transactions such as on-line banking and stock trading," said CeloCom chief executive officer Sven Hammar. "eSigner enables digital signing of comprehensive and complex legal documents and contracts."
The product was built by Carlow-born Neil Costigan, founder and chief technology officer of CeloCom. "This allows people to sign Web pages using public key infrastructure (PKI) technology, whether that be software based or via smartcards," said Costigan. "It adds an extra element of non-repudiation over existing SSL (secure sockets layer) security."
"If you are banking, for example, and you are sending money out of your account to someone else's, then the next day you could claim you didn't send it. With this, the bank has a verified record of the page," said Costigan.
"While companies like Baltimore build PKI infrastructures, we build applications. We're really a PKA company," he said. "People don't want a whole programme, they just want the application."
CeleCom's technology is recommended by Baltimore Technologies as a way of using PKI on Web pages. Through Baltimore, the company is involved in the international digital banking group, Identrus.
Costigan founded CeloCom after he moved to Sweden in 1994, having graduated from DCU. The company has been funded through revenue and from a USD7 million investment from Investor AB, a Swedish industrial holding company. That investment was made at the end of 1999.
CeloCom, which currently employs 77 people in Sweden, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands and the US, is expected to make an announcement of significant funding in the next week.
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